West Bromwich Albion

Again, this update has been delayed due to life (and work) getting in the way. Time is precious and the weather has been glorious (for three days at least) and so many things get pushed to the sidelines, and one of those things is this website. However, nigh on a month is far too long to keep you, dear readers, waiting for a debrief of the latest shenanigans of the Bagnalls, so I shall keep you no longer.

The last time I sat down to regale you with our news the children were yet to return to school from their Easter holiday break, and now we find ourselves a few weeks shy of the half term break. So, what have we been doing and how are Baguettes enjoying the final term of this school year?

It has to be said, that we have not been resting on our laurels, indeed the girls have a more active social life that either Lucinda or me, and probably a more active life that I have ever had (cue the violins!). This is in no small part due to the fact that the girls’ school has a plethora of after (and pre-) school clubs that cover a wide variety of interests. At the start of each term you put your name in the hat against the clubs that you are interested in and with luck you will get into the club that you want. We gave the girls a full choice of clubs to join, put their names against them and fortunately they both got the clubs that they wanted to join.

The first club of the week is non-school related, however, for it is the joys of Brownies for Éowyn at the local Church hall. She thoroughly enjoys Brownies even though none of the other girls that attend actually go to her school; it is therefore a completely different circle of friends which we think is good for Éowyn, as it develops her social skills, not that they need too much honing. Most of the girls attend the local Catholic school where Ezra attends pre-school. It is quite nice that when we drop Ezra off there that some of the girls that go to Brownies are really excited to see Éowyn. It is a busy start to the week for Éowyn; Brownies finishes late on a Monday evening and Tuesday mornings before school is her first school club of the week: Choir. Yes, choir. Anyone that knows our first born will know that she has inherited her delicate, dulcet tones from her father and so it is quite surprising that she has managed to hold on to her place. Can’t wait for the feedback at the end of term.

There is then a bit of a gap before both girls attend then next school clubs on a Friday afternoon. Éowyn at performing arts (much more fitting to her personality and inherent skills) and Amélie at dance. Indeed, as the beginning of the week is busy for Éowyn so Friday afternoon is the start of a busy twenty four hours for Amélie. After dance she returns home for a quick bite to eat before her third clothing change of the day and from her dance outfit to her Rainbow uniform. Seeing how much Éowyn enjoys Brownies Amélie has followed big sister’s footsteps into the world of guiding. Amélie, who is not old enough to join Brownies (she has another 18 months or so to wait) has joined the local Rainbow pack.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Girl Guiding world, Rainbows is the first step into that world. Girls aged 5 to 7 can become a Rainbow before joining Brownies (at the age of 7) and then the Guides (at the age of 10). We had attempted to get Éowyn into Rainbows before she joined Brownies at the end of last year, but unfortunately all the places had been taken and so we learned from this and had Amélie’s name down ready for the first available place. That place became available as the Easter holiday ended and therefore we were quick to ensure that Amélie went for her taster session. As we thought she loved it and so subs were paid, uniform is on order and she is now a fully fledged Rainbow and thus both girls are members of the Girl Guiding sorority.

Amélie’s busy end to the working week doesn’t stop with Dance class after school and Rainbows after Dance but continues on Saturday mornings with a short walk to the local leisure centre for swimming lessons. She is going to be one fit little girl.

The girls’ week of exercise doesn’t end there either. The local leisure centre runs a Roller Disco every Saturday night. With a shift pattern that gives me two weekends off out of every three, we have headed through the park to the leisure centre to introduce the girls to the world of rollerskating. Ungainly and ill-balanced at first the girls have taken to it very well and although they still resemble Bambi on ice they are growing in confidence and thoroughly enjoy skating around the gym. The first week Lucinda and I were fully engaged in helping them stay upright while Ezra sat on the sidelines, however he didn’t want to be left out and all week asked if he could rollerskate the following Saturday. All for equally opportunities the following Saturday we obliged.

He didn’t take to it in the same way as his older sisters. He didn’t like having the skates on (even before he tried to stand up). I took him to one side of the gym and tried to give him confidence on his wheels, as I had with Éowyn the week before. He didn’t like it. He kept saying that he was going to fall, despite my reassurances that he couldn’t fall because Daddy was holding him. Nevertheless this did not fully reassure him and he got a little more upset crying out ‘Daddy, I’m going to die rollerskating!‘ After stifling a laugh, I thought that perhaps he was not quite ready for rollerskating and carried him to the side of the gym and took his rollerskates off. We will see if his interest in rollerskating is piqued next time we go.

Ezra seems to have something about dying at the moment. He said to me one morning, ‘Daddy, I don’t want you to go to work.‘ I explained that I had to go to work and he replied, ‘But Daddy, if you go to work you will die.‘ I asked him why he thought I would die if I went to work. With his nascent interest in the dark side of the force I am not sure whether his reply was a warning or a threat. ‘Because if you go to work, you will have a car accident and they will not find you because you will fall down a hole.‘ I have been checking my break cables recently.

This may have come from the fact that Ezra has also returned to school and is now doing two full days (plus a half day on a Wednesday). Thus life is changing for our son. He is becoming more independent, he is walking everywhere now, rather than being the lazy tyke that he sometimes was and insisting on sitting in a pushchair. He is interacting with older children at school and although he is used to sharing his space with other children being at school is a different experience. Nevertheless we are proud of how well he is adapting to full days at school.

The weather since the last update has been a little unpredictable to say the least. The weekend after the update there were snow showers, followed the weekend after with 27°C (80°F – for our American cousins) and thus the first barbeque of the season. Indeed we had three very nice days in a row but now the weather has returned to the usual inbetween vernal average. Regardless, the barbeque has had an airing and therefore will be a regular sight at Chez Bagnall.

With summer weather and Ezra’s new found enjoyment in walking, new shoes needed to be bought. As anyone with small children will realise, kids shoes are expensive (especially when you need to buy three children shoes at the same time) and they grow out of them so quickly. All three children were measured for shoes and all three of them a grown so much that new shoes were a necessity. Let’s hope they last over the summer – I’m not banking on it.

As usual around this time, work is busy. It is the culmination of many of the sporting seasons, including our biggest client the Premier League. It has been a fantastic season for the neutral with Leicester City winning the title, and equally fantastic as a West Bromwich Albion fan with Aston Villa relegated. It is amusing but there is a genuine fear that it will take Aston Villa a long time to regain their former glory, something that in all honesty one doesn’t really want to see for any club. Villa’s season was poor but I don’t think Spurs’ fans will wish to be reminded about the last day of this season either, however I feel that life long Gooner, Terry Wood, will be smiling from that North Bank in the sky tonight. (OK, pedants, with Manchester United’s game postponed due to a suspect package it technically wasn’t the last day of the season but it was certainly the last day for the other 18 clubs!)

Coupled with the end of season mania we have had the BBC in the house producing their transmission of the World’s biggest non-sporting live event: The Eurovision Song Contest for the second year running. Unfortunately, there were no parties at an embassy (unlike last year), no raffles and thus no weekend trip to European cities. Let us not forget that we are launching two new channels before the end of May and preparing all the upgrades, connectivity and new installs that will occur over the summer. It is going to be a busy one and you may not see too much of me! (I will get my excuses in now!)

I am not the only one with busy weeks ahead. Éowyn is in the middle of her Year 2, Key Stage 1, SATS. KS 1 SATS test the children’s ability in English and Maths. The English exam is comprised of four tests: Grammar and Punctuation, Spelling and two Reading papers; while Maths is comprised of an arithmetic and a reasoning paper. The results of which, are scaled, graded and then rated against the national average, all under the pretence of highlighting where your child might need extra help. I don’t think that I have ever met a teacher that doesn’t know where the children in their care need extra help. This is just a way of rating school but all it is doing is putting young children under pressure. Education is not about passing exams it is about teaching children a variety of skills to help them to find their place in the world. Performance tables can only give you a narrow view of a child (or a teacher, or a school), luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Thankfully, Éowyn’s school have been fairly relaxed with these exams and thus Éowyn has not felt any pressure and we certainly have been playing the importance of these exams down. Éowyn has been doing really well at school lately, moving up levels in maths and keeping up her record of 10/10 in every spelling test; her hand writing is neat and her reading is fine so whether she can identify if the verb tense is a present perfect or present progressive or what 75% of 60 is, kind of falls into insignificance compared to whether she can identify why someone is upset, why racism is dumb (her words) and inventing games for her and her friends to play.

Éowyn is not the only one who is moving up levels of achievement at school. Amélie has gone up another level at reading and is now the highest level reader in her class. Fantastic news of which we are very proud, however, other levels of her education made need some assistance. Lucinda’s birthday is just around the corner and Amélie decided that mommy might like some Vanish Gold as a present. I was not ready for the suggestion when she proposed it and let forth a laugh. This upset Amélie. I tried to comfort her while I explained that mommy may not appreciate washing powder as a present but her reasoning was not without justification: it comes in a pink and gold package, so it looks nice and it makes the mommies on the telly happy. You can not deny the logic!

Logic is not something that can be assigned to the following nugget that may have passed you by. The Grim Reaper has added a number of beloved personalities to his toll since the last update and the most prominent of which is arguably Prince. Four years ago I, tongue-in-cheek, suggested that Prince was perhaps a time travelling Maya from the planet Nibiru come to save the world with his purply music, when the 2012 apocalypse did not happen. Well, if this individual is to believed, that was but a reprieve for Prince’s death heralds the end times. What is it with religious apocalyptics? Perhaps they should go back to school and do their SATS!

I think I have preoccupied your time for long enough and I am sure that you are more interested in the latest crop of photos, and there are few hundred extra on the Flickr pages. Therefore, I will bid you adieu and unless I have a car accident and my car falls down a hole I will see you on these pages shortly.

And so another Premier League season draws to an end. The first solely from Stockley Park and although it hasn’t been without incident on the whole it has been relatively successful. Indeed not only successful for IMG but NBC, the rights holders in the United States. They have raised the profile of football (or soccer) in the States and not only for their production standards but for the technical complexity of bringing Premier League games into the homes of the average American. Indeed, on the 5th May 2015 in New York they won an Emmy, in the 36th Sports Emmy awards, for Outstanding Technical Team Studio.

If you look at the list of Technical Supervisors whose names are on that Emmy, you may recognise a familiar name. NBC were gracious, not only to recognise the fact that my department assist them in their technological endeavours but to include me and a number of other IMG staff members on the official list of winners. I was very touched by this kind gesture and NBC had no obligation to include us in their win nevertheless it means that I am an Emmy winner and entitled to say so in perpetuity.

Not a bad start to my new position at work. Yes after 4 years as Head of Live Operations I am now Head of Engineering, MCR and Live Operations. As part of a departmental restructure I have become a third of the Cerberus inspired, Head of Engineering role. This is my 6th position, in my 19 plus years at IMG, a relatively unusual state of affairs in our modern world.

The new position brings more responsibilities and a further step away the coal face which has the added benefit that I will be working only one weekend in three, rather than every weekend that I do at the moment: a rebalancing of the work-life equation and more, quality, family time.

The streak of good fortune is continuing. IMG are currently providing facilities to the BBC to produce the 60th Eurovision Song Contest. The contest is being hosted in Vienna due to last year’s win by the Bearded Lady: Conchita Wurst. In the spirit of the competition the Austrian Ambassador hosted a send-off party at the Austrian Embassy. Along with the BBC personnel, four of us from IMG were invited to attend. How can you refuse an invitation to an Embassy from an Ambassador? Therefore, Tuesday saw the four of us head for Belgrave Square at the Austrian Embassy.

A grand building, as befits an embassy, the party was just getting going as we arrived; good timing from our point of view. There was a steady flow of alcohol but disappointingly no silver platters of Ferrero Rocher. After an introduction by Rufus Hound, Electro Velvet (the UK entrant) performed their song: ‘Still in love with you’ and there was an opportunity to grab a photo with the duo.

The icing on the cake, and the completion of the hattrick of wins, was yours truly winning the top prize in the free raffle. Yes, I won flights to Vienna and two nights in a boutique hotel to be taken by the end of the year. With Lucinda’s birthday less than a week away it was a good present to add to the 1 metre inflatable Austrian Airways jet that the tickets came attached to.

This website is not supposed to be hogged by me, merely written by me but I think they are worthy of inclusion in family news. However, you are here to hear about the exploits of the baguettes so I will stall no longer.

Lucinda’s new venture, her new vocation, childminding is going well. As mentioned I will not go into details on this website however suffice to say her regular care is settled and she has helped a neighbour out with two days of emergency childcare. She has raised invoices and has been paid. More importantly she has not had to wake up at 0345 and spend a day being shouted at by irate passengers. She has been able to pick our children up from school and be there for them every day.

Even better than that, because as a registered childminder she has had to be DBS (CRB) checked (and consequently so have I by association) and therefore we have been able to register with Éowyn’s school as potential helpers. Therefore, when the school asked for volunteers to help with the year 1 school trip to the Living Rainforest in Berkshire, Lucinda put her name down and was invited to assist. So while Lucinda and Éowyn had fun at the Rainforest (not really fun for Lucinda looking after 6 children), I took the day off to look after Amélie and Ezra. This is something that we would not have even considered in the past. So although it was a difficult decision to leave the airport it is rapidly proving to be the correct one.

As school trips indicate Éowyn’s school year is rapidly coming to an end, just a half term left but there is still an awful amount to squeeze in to those few weeks. She is enjoying her after school dancing lessons (taking after her aunties and cousins). She has some end of year academic tests (personally I think that this is a little too young – let them be children!), however the biggest event will undoubtedly be Éowyn’s film role.

As I have previously mentioned her after school drama class are shooting a little film and all the children in the class have been given roles. Éowyn has been typecast as the naughty girl. She has a number of lines and hopefully is taking it seriously. There will be a premiere and a red carpet event, something definitely to look forward to. Could it be the start of an illustrious film career? Are you someone from the future looking at this website for a background on the latest Oscar winner?

Éowyn isn’t the only one whose academic year is rapidly drawing to an end. Amélie will take a big step in her life, leaving nursery and heading for full time education in September. We have had Amélie’s school place confirmed and she will be attending the same school as Éowyn. Unfortunately they will not be in the same campus for as Éowyn moves to year two so she will move further up the road to the bigger site. It will be a further two years before they are on the same site.

Amélie currently attends the outstanding nursery at the school across the road from Éowyn’s new campus. However, it seems that Amélie has misheard the name of her current school for she does not attend Our Lady of the Grocery. In fairness, she does not really know what a Rosary is, the heathens that we are. We are very impressed with Our Lady of Rosary nursery so much that we have put Ezra’s name down, even though he is not due to start for nearly a year: such is the envisioned demand the newly bestowed outstanding status will have.

Ezra is growing up though and his vocabulary is increasing daily. Much of it revolves around food: ‘Pork Pie’, ‘Chocolate Toast’, ‘Cheese’ and the ubiquitous ‘More Please’ but there are the usual animals, colours and cartoon characters. If he is out and about and he sees an animal he will point to it, name it and then make the sound associated with the animal.

Usually this is a dog, for as we take the girls to school we have to walk through the local park where many people walk their dogs. He will point to the spaniels, collies and other various breeds and declare ‘dog’ followed by ‘woof, woof’. However that wasn’t what he said when he saw an Old English Sheepdog. He looked scared, pointed at the beast and muttered ‘Bear’.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘it is a doggie.’

‘No Daddy,’ came the answer. ‘Bear!’

I suppose to a two year old child an Old English Sheepdog would look like a bear and he, for one was not to be dissuaded.

Ezra’s new found love is jigsaws. Not the electrically powered reciprocating saws but the multi-piece puzzles. It is something that we are encouraging for it develops his eye to hand co-ordination, manual dexterity and problem solving at the very least. Indeed he enjoys them so much he will sit on the floor after completing his current favourite, a 45 piece ‘In The Night Garden’ puzzle, and before you have a chance to congratulate him he will take it apart and start again. We would prefer him to do this though, than sit with the iPad or watching television. There is a hint of irony considering my career, or perhaps I have better appreciation.

So, with a full BBC crew producing the Eurovision Song Concert, semi-finals and final and preparations underway for 10 simultaneous matches for the last day of the Premier League season (can West Bromwich Albion end the season with a hattrick of their own, with wins against Manchester United – check – Chelsea – check and Arsenal – tbc); not to mention the last Football League shows produced by IMG for the BBC, and a couple of recruitment drives television is taking up a great deal of my time this week. Therefore, I will bid you adieu and leave you to look at the latest batch of photos.

February is nearly over and once again this site has been bereft of updates. You are getting used to this by now I am sure. Does this put pressure on me to deliver an evocative passage of prose? Well, if you are expecting such a delight you will be sadly disappointed but hopefully the photos will make up for it!

The weather so far this winter has been relatively benign. No great storms like last year therefore no flooding; no heavy falls of snow (we did have about 5mm one morning, with drifts of nearly 10mm but not enough to warrant a Facebook posting) and no prolonged periods of cold (unlike the North Eastern U.S.) . Nevertheless, it is winter and therefore the fact that our central heating works has been greatly appreciated. It is very pleasant walking in from the school run and being greeted with a wall of warmth as you open the front door. A small something, and something that I had taken for granted for many years; as with many of today’s creature comforts it is only when they are taken away do you realise how much you have come to rely on them.

In my bachelor days I shared a flat in Richmond Upon Thames with 2 other bachelors. In a throw back to the 1970’s we had a power cut one evening that lasted several hours. It was only then that we realised how all of our usual evening entertainment relied on electricity. Nevertheless we endured and a candlelit game of kerplunk with a Chinese take-away and a slightly warm beer kept the chthonic gloom away.

It is something that I am conscious (ok, semi-conscious) of ensuring that the Baguettes do not become so reliant on electricity for entertainment. There is no denying that they do enjoy watching TV and playing on the iPads but in fairness to my little ones they do enjoy playing with dolls, cutting up bits of paper and, in Ezra’s case, playing with his ‘choo-choo‘.

As the above demonstrates, Ezra’s vocabulary is increasing daily and it is now easier for him to convey want he wants. He has recently discovered his wooden train set that we bought him for Christmas and he delights in sitting on the floor pushing the train around the track. In fact, he has become a little obsessive with it and will keep tugging on your leg saying ‘choo-choo‘ and squeals with excitement as you connect the track together in a loop. It is in contrast with his other obsession: Peppa Pig, or more accurately ‘George‘, her little brother. I think that a trip to Peppa Pig World is in order, in the not too distant future.

Ezra’s other new found love belies his Midland roots: Pork Pies. I had bought myself a couple of mini pork pies and as I took it out of the fridge to garnish my dinner (lunch for those of you in the South of England) plate, Ezra reached out his hand and said ‘Mine‘. I always like the children to try new food so I gave it to him, half expecting it to be returning with barely a nibble gone. No such luck. He polished it off completely. It is not a one off either, he will regularly eat a mini pork pie with his father. Flat cap, pork pie, all he needs now is a whippet!

Ezra’s next big stage will be to move into his big bed. He is still in his cot, but he is rapidly outgrowing it. Therefore a new bed has been built in his room but we have not moved him into it yet. I will update you all in the new write up as to his progress to a big boy’s bed.

Ezra isn’t the only one with new milestones over the last few weeks. Éowyn has completed her first fundraising activity, no doubt the first of many. Organised through the school it was for the NSPCC (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) and involved physical exercise. She had to perform 100 sets of various activities, running, skipping, hopping, star jumps and the like. The more sponsors she received the more reward badges she received. Obviously she wanted the highest level of badge: the Rainbow badge. Therefore Daddy took the sponsorship form to work to see if he could coerce his colleagues into parting with their hard earned money. They came up trumps and with the family filling in the blank lines, Éowyn not only reached the Rainbow milestone but raised a grand total of £184.03 (the odd thruppence came from colleagues trying to outdo each other by a penny!).

Amélie’s first was her first school report from her new school. Her school has just had its latest Ofsted (the office for standards in education) inspection and had been rated Outstanding, which is fantastic news. So would Amélie’s report be as favourable? We need not of worried, for she received an outstanding rating of her own.

They are very pleased with her and have said that she development-wise she is hitting the targets that are given to reception year children, in fact the one fear they have is that she may be bored when she goes to school as there may not be much to engage her. The other observation that they have is that she tends to play on her own. It is something that we have noticed at home too. She is often in her own little world even when she is playing ‘with’ other children. I have put with in inverted commas because she has a tendency to play next to her friends (as does become upset when her friends are not about or will not play next to her) but they do not interact. That is maybe a little unfair for she will play with other children but I think she just prefers her own company.

As the title alludes last week was half-term. We had no trips planned so we decided that it would be nice to pop up to see Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz. It seems an inordinate amount of time since I last went up to West Bromwich. Coming on back of Valentine’s day Nanny Fran also offered to look after the kids on the Sunday evening that we arrived so that we could take advantage of one of the restaurants in the new development in West Bromwich town centre.

All three kids love seeing their Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz mainly because they do not see them that often. Even Ezra got excited as we arrived in Hateley Heath. We only spent two and half days in West Bromwich, for I had to go to work on the Wednesday and Lucinda the next day. However it was nice spending some time with Nanny Fran and the kids enjoyed it especially since they were allowed to visit a toy shop and spend some of their Christmas money. Not that they were allowed to spend all of it, for one of the jobs that Lucinda and I managed to complete on this visit was to pay some money into their West Bromwich Building Society accounts.

When I was born an account at the West Bromwich Building Society was opened in my name and as part of a tradition (of two generations) we have done the same for my children shortly after they were born. Well, all but Ezra. For some reason or another we have not managed to do so for our son. This was rectified on this trip and now he, too, can begin to put some money aside to squander on a gap year, a trip around the world, or his first car or indeed what ever he sees fit and the same for his older sisters. Hopefully there will be enough in there for them to find useful.

I take your leave and as March approaches as a West Brom fan we are in the rare territory of still being in the F.A. cup with a trip to our arch rivals Aston Villa in the quarter-final. A win will mean a trip to Wembley and a semi-final appearance, but defeat will leave us open to mocking from Villa fans for many a-year.